ABSTRACT
Nationalism has its processions and pilgrimages. It has, too, its holy days, and just as the Christian Church adapted some festivals from Paganism, so the national state has borrowed from Christianity. Nationalism, like any religion, calls into play not simply the will, but the intellect, the imagination, and the emotions. The intellect constructs a speculative theology or mythology of nationalism. Modern nationalism first arose among peoples that were traditionally Christian, and as a religion it has naturally borrowed and adapted to its own purposes many customs and usages of historic Christianity. Liberal democracy is quite compatible with nationalism. Supernatural historic Judaism remains a potent force in the lives of many Jews, but a large number of them now express their "religious sense" in a "higher" nationalism, either that of the people among whom they live or that of Zionism and the new national state of Israel.
